The itch of knowledge

 

Sometime back ST journalist Rohit Brijnath wrote an article entitled 'The itch of knowledge' describing when he gets older he reflects on how little he knows. I can totally relate to that not only because the world is changing so fast that it is hard to catch up but even if the world stagnates there is still so much backlog knowledge to acquire. 

Rohit best describes it as "So few years are left and so very little is known."

In some sense it sounds very depressing. Rohit comes out with a long list of books unread, fields of knowledge like astrometry (what's that?) unexplored and languages not mastered. This triggers thoughts of my own countless list of 'to learn's ranging from Chinese (so as to be able to read Chinese literature) to some basic physics (so as to understand Hawking's Big Bang theory) to understanding the Middle East conflict once and for all. Then there is the more practical knowledge to acquire like cooking beef rendang or research on cats' behaviour to understand my cat better. This is not even considering the endless list of book titles stored in my mobile notebook that are meant to be borrowed.

Yet and it is a big YET there are endless times when inertia takes over. Inertia sometimes takes the form of being a TV couch potato or often enough the habitual binging on social media. This of course is often followed by some sense of guilt.

Rohit calls out that "there is no time to waste" cautioning that as we age we are also quicker to forget what we have learned. I guess the only way out is to prioritize  and focus on the top few regrets for not learning. 

After all harbouring too much 'needs-to-know' creates too much attachment to this world and instills too much fear of missing out on this world, when it is time to go.